The anticipated debate at the Ecumenical Council on the proposed draft declaration on Jews will begin either this Friday or next Monday, it was predicted here today. It will follow the discussion on the declaration on religious liberty, which will start tomorrow.
The American prelates met today and reached an agreement on the number of their speakers to participate in the debates on the two declarations. No names of the speakers from the United States were revealed, except that it is known that Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston and Joseph Cardinal Ritter of St. Louis will lead in the debate, demanding complete exoneration of the Jewish people from the deicide charge, and asking for a stronger text on the attitude of the Catholic Church toward the Jews than the one presented to the Council Fathers.
It is anticipated that the debate on the religious liberty declaration will continue for two or three days. Nobody here is undertaking to predict how long the debate on the declaration on Jews will last. However, all indications point to the belief that this debate may last several days, since there is tremendous interest in the document on Jews, as testified by the fact that there are 70 pages of amendments and proposals to the original text, which was prepared last year and revised for the present session.
The revisions, made under the pressure of conservative bishops and of Catholic prelates from Arab countries, will come under strong criticism when the debate starts. The majority of the 2,500 prelates attending the session are dissatisfied with the revisions, which provoked deep dissatisfaction also among the Jews of the world because they diluted the original draft in which the Jews were exonerated from collective guilt for the death of Jesus. The revised draft says that only the Jews “of our time” cannot be blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus, implying that the Jews in Jesus’ time are still to be considered guilty of his execution by the Romans.
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